Attention all future homeowners: Don’t. I’m giving my three-year-old a bath – which consists of him playing with Spiderman in the bathtub while I sit on the (closed) toilet reading Esquire magazine – when my normally cool-as-ice wife screams from downstairs, “Get him outta the bath! Get him outta the bath!”

From my perch on the toilet, I respond: “Whaaaaaaaat?”

She came back with the same demand of “get him outta the bath,” so with anger (I hardly got past the “editor’s note”) I threw my Esquire out the bathroom door, grabbed my son from his bath, wrapped a towel around him, put him in his room, locked the gate to his room (don’t judge), and ran downstairs to see what the fuss was all about.

The fuss, then: A light fixture, hanging from the ceiling directly below the bathtub, was filling up with water and then the water was running right out of the fixture onto the floor below.

Now the word “surreal” is thrown about our everyday language like rice at a wedding, but really: This was surreal. You don’t expect to see water filling up a light fixture. A light fixture that, for the record, was still on and … yep, there it goes! … and now a light fixture that was still on and falling from the ceiling with water falling all over the place.

In the moments that followed – and let me tell you, they were moments fraught with fear, anxiety, and numerous utterances of “WHAT THE (BLEEP)?” – decisions were made. First decision was to hit the breaker in the basement to kill the power to the light. (Wife’s decision. Good one.) Next decision was drain the bathtub. (My decision. Could have been a horrible one. It wasn’t, which we’ll get to in a moment.) From there, towels on the floor, buckets on the towels, etc.

Hours passed. Parts of the ceiling collapsed. Water kept coming down in a steady not-quite-a-drip, not-quite-a-flow-either. (We need a word for that.)

Anyway, I figured the water coming down was the remnants of the water in the bathtub. It was going to be a long night. Then my wife made another decision. “Why don’t we shut the water off and see what happens?”

Well, lo and behold and all that, the water stopped falling from the ceiling. Best decision yet.

As it turns out, a galvanized steel pipe – probably about 95 years old – finally sprung a leak. Had nothing to do with the bathtub. End result? New pipe, new ceiling, new wall, yadda yadda yadda, this that the other thing, expensive but not terrible, just enough to warrant me taking my fishnets and miniskirt out of cold storage and spending a few nights on the corner of State and Main. (Bonus: State and Main are very close to my newspaper’s office, so the extra commute time is negligible.)

This pipe bursting thing is just the latest minorly major headache we’ve experienced in our near 10-year experiment in home ownership. Some other notable instances of “what the (bleeps)?” have included: Fence collapsing; furnace destruction; central air unit kaputzing; toilet leaking; skunk invasion; mouse attack; squirrel down the chimney (three times); doorbell fritzing; washer not agitating; dryer very agitating; and ice cube maker not working, which was really aggravating, as I previously threw out the ice trays, thinking I’d never need them again.

I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t/won’t remember. (And I realize how lucky I’ve been. As said earlier: Minorly major. Not one “majorly major” house issue. Yet. Day’s young.)

Now of course, owning a home – well, “the bank owning the home and me managing to hit the monthly nut is fashion best described as ‘just barely’” – has it’s benefits. LIke I get to mow my own lawn, pick up my own leaves …

OK. No. Really. There are benefits. I can play my old Metallica CDs as loud as I want until my wife tells me to turn it down. I can watch with pride as my children draw on the walls, making memories. I can also go shopping at Home Depot for a new, non-water logged light fixture.

Oy.

By the way, and this really has nothing to do with nothing, but that Esquire magazine? Disappeared. My wife claims she didn’t throw it out. I have my doubts. Just wanted to get that on record. It’s important to note these things.

Jeff Edelstein can be reached at facebook.com/jeffreyedelstein and twitter.com/jeffedelstein.